How Rational Is the Reluctance to Be Vaccinated against COVID-19? An Economic Approach

This paper considers a static game in which a player makes a decision in the first moment of whether or not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and then nature acts. In making the decision the player takes into consideration expected costs and benefits of being inoculated in terms of income. The relative speed with which the first vaccines have reached the market has caused some parts of the population to be concerned about the possible side effects of vaccination and, as a result, a part of the population is reluctant to take the vaccine. The papers finds that according to statistics on the pandemic’s evolution and certain assumptions about the likelihood of virus sequelae and vaccine side-effects, the decision to be vaccinated appears to be optimal. Low probability of contagion and a very low vaccine effectiveness rate are needed to make the decision to be vaccinated non-optimal.